by David Guymer
‘You two.’
III
Stronos hung back as the Helfather escorted them into the chamber. He looked up into the hatched and filtered light that came through the long columnar tunnel from the surface skylight, his bionic eye struggling to find a point of focus amidst the drifting rust. Banners bedecked in clan heraldry rippled in an artificial breeze. There were more than the ten with which Stronos was familiar, names like Atraxii and Ungavarr woven in iron thread into faded cloth. His breath caught as he wondered at their history. Columns of high capacity data cabling descended through the columns of light and rust, forty-one of them splaying over that same number of iron thrones below. They were set up in a circle, facing inwards, a web of finer interface cabling running between.
The Eye of Medusa. Verrox and Raan’s descriptions had been inadequate.
Iron Fathers in power armour, and their slower moving elders in bulky Terminator plate, lowered themselves into thrones. Mechanicus adepts wired them in and hooked up fluid drips. Dreadnoughts stood mutely beside their allotted positions, whole teams of crimson-robed enginseers working to remove protective armour panelling and connect them.
Stronos could hear the steady thrum of oxygenation units, and yet it was power of a type that no augur unit could define that stirred this air.
At the centre of the arrangement of thrones hung a war-axe. It hovered several metres off the ground in a crackling suspension field. Its haft was long, even to the arm of a Space Marine, with a grip formed of bundled power cords. It was double-headed, with two cog-toothed blades of dulled ormolu curving either side of a nest of cabling within which was set a functioning and alert servo-skull. Its eye sockets and mouth pulsed with silvery illumination as it surveilled the ranks of Iron Fathers.
Stronos had never seen the weapon in battle, but no brother of the Iron Hands could fail to recognise the Axe of Medusa.
Beneath it was a speaker’s podium in the form of the Medusa Mechanicus, the traditional emblem of the Martian Creed, but with the usual ‘human’ half replaced by the black contours of a Mk V power helmet. Two hooded magi were stooped together in chittering meta-conference. Their shrouded faces blinked with coloured lights. Their robes were trimmed with gold and sewn with arcane sigils of rank and status, but the crimson thread was so faded that in parts it was white or frayed altogether, exposing the inhuman augmentation beneath. Even their mechanisms looked of another era, masterfully crafted but archaic, clockwork contrivances that had wandered into the engine room of a great hall of war.
Verrox and Ares moved to their prepared thrones. Ares wandered for a moment, apparently uncertain which seat was his. The enginseers waiting to attend on the ancient beheld him with expressions of awe and reverence. There was already a hexagram of scented votive offerings smoking over the prepared plug-in ports of his throne, and a chorister issued algorithmic blurts of hymnal code from her long, tubular throat.
‘The Eye can be overwhelming,’ said Raan, as the adepts spread out like docking buoys to guide the confused ancient in. Stronos set aside his concern to listen to the captain’s advice. ‘There are many inputs, physical and not. It is confusing, even without the full meta-inload of noospheric uplink.’ Raan gestured cursorily to the heavy net of cabling.
‘Are you connected?’ Stronos asked.
‘No.’ After a moment’s silence, the iron captain concluded that elaboration was required. ‘I am not an Iron Father. Induction demands several years of indoctrination as well as specific neural augments that our own apothecarion lack the facilities to implant.’
‘They must be performed on Mars?’
‘It is a long and arduous procedure, and survival is not guaranteed. Not an expenditure that would be made on a mere proxy. I speak my piece when prompted, I listen to that which I understand and report it to my Iron Fathers, but beyond that I do nothing.’
‘Who are the two magi?’ Stronos pointed to the two hooded adepts stood in the electric glow of the static field. A gaggle of cherubic scriveners were seated at their feet wearing expressions of beatific joy, the swaddling robes on their infant bodies tumbling down the podium steps. They tugged on the creaking articulation frame of the servo-quill mounted above their heads and prepared to take minutes.
‘The podium is the position of the Voice of Mars, the forty-second voice on the Iron Council. When one amongst the forty-one is elected to warleader they cede the podium to him.’
‘Should there not be three of them?’
‘The one that requires the cane to stand is called Talos Epsili.’ Raan did not move or gesture in any way as he spoke, referencing the magi as if from an inloaded imager file. ‘The other that resembles a wisp of red smoke is Chiralias Tarl. Their positions are secondary and tertiary, respectively. Bodies wither and die and are replaced, but the Mechanicus has served in this capacity since the Tempering.’
‘Serve?’
‘Not all Iron Fathers can return to Medusa. Not all can spare a captain to speak for them.’ A note of ire in his voice at that. ‘The Voice of Mars speaks for them. It is not a task a warrior would crave and thus it is a service.’ He turned then to look at the podium with his own augmented optics. ‘It appears that Nicco Palpus has other business to attend. Irrelevant. Mars has three mouths but speaks with only one voice. The presence of the full triumvirate is customary but unnecessary.’
‘Where do I stand?’ Stronos asked.
Raan pointed to one of two hemispherical enclosures that encircled the forty-one thrones. Viewed from within the central shaft of illumination it was difficult to make out in detail, the shadows contoured by the armoured forms of honour guards and equerries, glimpses of reflectivity that might have been plaques mounted on the walls behind them.
None of the warriors already in the enclosure greeted him and he, in turn, said nothing to them. He found a space and stood there while Raan lowered himself into his Iron Father’s throne.
Stronos could see that about a third of the seats were empty. As Raan had observed, war could not be postponed for the Iron Council, and the expanse of territory over which the clans were spread was vast. Incalculably vast. Thinking on it, seeing those empty chairs, Stronos understood the logic underpinning the existence of the Voice of Mars.
The two ancient magi were still locked in conversation. The enthroned Iron Fathers and their representatives appeared to watch them without watching, their attention diverted through that secondary mat of connective cabling that covered the floor. Stronos reasoned that it was comprised of one-to-one data hardlines, closed interlinks that would allow for the passage of private missives between the Iron Fathers even while public discourse ran through the trunk cabling or was spoken aloud. Stronos sought out Verrox. The grizzled Iron Father’s eyes were shut, his scarred cheeks locked in a distasteful grimace. Stronos could not begin to imagine the deal making and ship trading that must have been running through those networked minds, before the main business of the conclave had even begun.
What were they waiting for?
Stronos looked up as the main doors drew back into the chamber walls with a reverberative clang and a striking figure in extensively rebuilt Terminator armour entered, flanked by a pair of Helfathers with a third keeping in lockstep close behind. Despite the company of such mighty servants, the Iron Father had a presence that chilled not just his immediate space but the entire chamber. The two magi looked up and fell silent. Verrox opened his eyes and scowled. The data-traffic noticeably decreased. Stronos felt a shiver pass down his spine, starting in his forgechain as though the augmetic had captured a stray piece of scrapcode from the local ether. The Voice of Mars retreated behind their podium and bowed as the Iron Father clumped past them.
Slits for several optic lenses glowed icily in the black iron of the Iron Father’s helm, but he turned perceptibly to behold the Axe of Medusa as he walked past it. His fingers twitched as if to close around it, a weakness of
flesh and memory that was gone as quickly as it came. But Stronos noticed.
‘The Iron Council acknowledges Iron Father Kristos to the throne of Clan Raukaan,’ said the magos who Raan had identified as Talos Epsili. Murmured and blurted greetings arose from scattered pockets of support within the circle. Verrox merely glowered, and he was not alone.
‘Do we begin?’ said Kristos, in a voice that for all its command and power could easily have been mistaken for that of a servitor. Armour clanked as he sat down, gripped the rests of his throne and waited for the adepts to link him. He folded a servo-arm with a rotable ripper-claw appendage over his shoulder. He looked around the circle without having to turn his head. The glow behind his helm slits brightened and diminished as his attention moved; the beetling click of his armour’s machine cant whispered as if offering counsel on the secrets and foibles of his rivals.
Stronos felt an immediate antipathy for the Iron Father, based solely on hearsay and intuition and with no grounding whatsoever in empiricism, and all the more bitter for that.
Iron Hands were never late. They did not make those kinds of mistakes. That Kristos had chosen to be so told Stronos all he needed to know about him and about the Iron Council itself.
With an indecipherable blurt of cant, the Voice of Mars called the Iron Council to session, and Stronos learned in short order that he would be drawing no pleasure today.
Debates blazed over the noosphere, at times simultaneously, conducted in a hyper-dense data-cant that even once removed from the network boggled Stronos’ processors. Periodically, every few minutes or so dependent on the complexity of the matter in hand, one of the Iron Fathers would stir from his stupor and make a verbal pronouncement in such an archaic form of old Medusan that Stronos could decipher one word in six. It was enough to tax even the formidable boredom threshold of an Iron Hand.
The cycle of debate and declaration ran without remission for several hours, during which time Stronos slowly began to recognise the divisions between, for want of a better nomenclature, the Kristosian and Verroxian factions. He could not elaborate the content of the debates, but the vehemence of the metadata and the directionality of its movement were impossible to miss.
Verrox’s face was drawn, as though he had performed the equivalent of ten days at peak performance over the last ten hours. He began to deliver a diatribe in the terse, consonant-rich expletive of ancient Medusan. Something about the battle calculus, the undying spirit – the word for ‘escalation’ cropped up numerous times. With a flutter of what might, earlier in proceedings, have been recognised as excitement, Stronos leaned forward to listen. This, at last, was what he was here for.
Kristos responded to Verrox’s oratory with a mocking blurt of cant. Verrox then made to rise out of his throne, only to find himself in an inglorious struggle with the hardline tethers and connective cabling that bonded him to his seat, a few of the Iron Fathers that Stronos had already marked as Kristosians laughing at the intemperate display. Kristos himself gave in to no such reaction. He held his throne with an aura of machine aloofness that damned with far greater potency than mere words ever could.
The two technomagi leaned across their podium to whisper something that Stronos could not hear and nobody else seemed to notice. He glanced to Ares, but the ancient was yet to contribute.
‘The vote on Iron Father Tubriik Ares’ motion is called,’ said Talos Epsili, silencing the chitter of data exchange with an announcement in cursive Gothic. ‘Those in favour of an escalation of force on the planet Thennos and a rescindment of interdiction orders, signal now.’
By an anachronistic mechanism of signalling assent, those in favour raised their hands. Raan and Ares both had theirs up. Stronos counted, his hearts calm, already planning how the loosening of their restrictions would bring the war on Thennos to a swift close. Stronos could see that Verrox and Ares had the backing of the majority, just as the Clan Vurgaan Iron Father had claimed he would. Twenty hands out of the twenty-seven were showing.
‘Those against?’ said the magos, out of ritual completeness.
Eight hands went up, including that of Iron Father Kristos. Stronos was irritated to see that Raan’s other hand had risen, and recalled that the captain was here as proxy to both Iron Fathers Breeka and Siilvus.
‘The Voice of Mars places its vote against, and in accordance with tradition will speak for those who cannot be present.’ The two magi shared a twittering conference. Chiralias Tarl appeared to gesture to the vacant thrones. Talos Epsili nodded and struck his staff upon the metal ground. ‘The votes against have it, twenty-two to twenty. Clan Vurgaan’s request for an alteration to the battle calculus is denied.’
Stronos stared at the podium in shock.
Every one of the absentee votes placed against? How could that be?
Verrox’s chain-teeth snarled in frustration. Stronos saw the Iron Father’s grip on his arm rests tighten, but this time he controlled the bloody impulse to rise and rip his counterpart from Clan Raukaan apart. Again, Stronos glanced at Ares, but again found he could glean nothing of the passive ancient’s mood.
‘This is illogical!’ Stronos shouted, and before he had reasoned what he was doing had pushed his way to the front of his darkened enclosure to the boundary of the light. ‘We will need to fight through a number of heavily defended skitarii enclaves in order to circumvent the interdiction zones.’
Kristos turned to him. Those around Stronos stepped back, muttering darkly at this breach of protocol. The three helmet lenses that faced in Stronos’ direction brightened as they worked to counter the gloom that Stronos was standing in. Stronos straightened. He would not be cowed.
‘Your objective is extermination,’ said Kristos. ‘So go back there and exterminate.’
IV
The workstation chair gave a warning creak as Melitan Yolanis dropped into it, tilting alarmingly backwards before the skitarii alpha that had pushed her caught her by the chair back and twisted her around. ‘Where is Callun. I– oh.’
Logi-Legatus Nicco Palpus was not at all as she had expected.
His gaunt frame was draped in crimson robes that bore the arcane sigil-workings of Mars, and was almost consumed by a high-backed command throne and its nested plug-ins and datasplays. His cranium had been extended slightly for increased capacity, and there was a faint metallic lustre to his complexion, but otherwise the most remarkable feature was how easily he might pass as human. His eyes emitted a subtle click as they mapped the nuance of her facial expression, his own altering to become an emollient mirror copy of hers. Melitan felt herself torn between squirming distrust and her body’s galvanic response to an empathetic face.
‘Callun Darvo,’ he said, without needing to access his meme-cache. ‘Enginseer adept of the twelfth grade, ordained in vehicular maintenance and tri-dimensional mapping.’ His voice was melodic, like the rhythms of a finely tuned engine, fatherly even, with the same dual undertones of pastoral concern and implicit personal authority this implied. Melitan found herself nodding obediently. ‘He is currently under escort to the surface. And he can expect a black mark against his duty record for his misuse of access protocols. His current assignation will almost certainly need to be reviewed.’
‘Respectfully, legatus, I would rather keep Callun where he is. I–’ She leaned over the table between them to protest before she realised how Palpus had manoeuvred her onto the defensive. She leant back, chair creaking, and resolved to treat her words with greater consideration from here on.
Palpus’ expression perfectly mimicked her patient resolve. Behind his chair and around his smooth metallic table, whispering multitask servitors moved through operation booths and alcoves. Hololithic representations of the Voice of Mars’ heraldic cryptex hovered over banks of quixotic instrumentarium, wall-mounted repeater screens sealed away behind ornate bronze shutters. Palpus nodded over Melitan’s shoulder and a moment later she heard th
e door ease shut as the skitarii officer exited. He steepled his fingers and settled back into his throne.
Melitan swallowed in sudden nervousness, as though the presence of an armed chaperone were preferable to being alone in a room with her legatus.
‘I expected you to be occupied with the Iron Council,’ she said, carefully.
‘My position as primary is ceremonial. My secondary and tertiary are capable of speaking for Mars’ interests.’ With deliberate casualness, Palpus reached across the table to turn the dataslate he had been working on over onto its face. He slid it back towards himself, though Melitan had already seen that it was a deployment order for the commitment of Clan Raukaan forces to Thennos, requiring his seal.
And for some reason, she felt that he knew she had seen it.
Removing the slate from the table, Palpus held it up for a servitor to remove. The lobotomised slave plodded away.
‘The demands on my time are, if not infinite, then sufficiently asymptotic as to appear so.’
‘Forgive my intrusion,’ said Melitan, pushing to keep the conversation on track. ‘Entering the Eye was impetuous, I know, but it was the only way I could think of to speak with you.’
Palpus emoted surprise. Melitan suspected it was pure calibration. The legatus looked more human than most, but it was a façade, an anthropogenic skin for a sophisticated thought-machine called Nicco Palpus.
‘You signed the orders charging me with Ancient Ares’ care,’ she said.
Palpus gestured to his workspace. ‘I sign many orders. Such is my function, and the Omnissiah demands nothing of us other than to be true to our function. Without a single warleader to command the Chapter and the Iron Council riven by factionalism, my burden has become exponentially greater. Somebody must maintain control.’ It was impossible to pin his mimetic expressions to a genuine emotion, but he did not seem at all displeased about his situation. His eyes clicked as he studied her reactions. ‘I cannot be expected to recall every order of passing significance. But is the function to which you have been assigned not one of high honour?’
